And its battery capacity is greater than an eight-year-old's bladder.

Well, at least it is when you’re on a network relatively uncluttered with other LTE users. Imagine a wireless broadband network is an interstate highway. Under the best circumstances, using Verizon’s 4G network is like barreling down Interstate 80 in western Nebraska going over 80mph. I should know—I’ve driven that stretch of highway far more often than anyone should, and I’ve even used Verizon’s network there from the passenger seat thanks to the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot 890L. The Jetpack is speedy, and its battery has a greater capacity than an eight-year-old’s bladder.

If you work for Ars, you work from home. Or Starbucks. Or anywhere you can find a broadband connection. Feeling the need to have backup broadband at home and broadband I wouldn't have to share with folks at the local Panera and Starbucks, I purchased a Sierra Overdrive WiMAX hotspot from Sprint in May 2010. That device had some irritating quirks, but I was satisfied with both local coverage and the speeds (around 3-5Mbps). But WiMAX is on the road to obsolescence, so when faced with the expiration of my contract and a vacation to a place where Sprint’s 4G network didn’t reach, I decided to move to LTE.

If you want LTE in the US, you’re really limited to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and Metro PCS at this point. Sprint’s LTE coverage is currently minimal (but growing) and Verizon’s is the broadest. But Verizon also has the most restrictive broadband caps. In my case, coverage trumped other considerations (Verizon is the only telecom with LTE coverage in Breckenridge, Colorado, where I spend time every year), so I went with the Jetpack 890L.

Usage

Priced at $19.99 with a two-year contract and including a $50 rebate, the 890L offers battery life of up to five hours and supports up to 10 WiFi connections at once when on LTE (this drops to five if you’re using 3G). It has a not–terribly-bright OLED display that will, at a glance, communicate signal strength, battery life, number of WiFi users, and the existence of new messages. There are three buttons on the front that allow you access to some basic device management features.

Like just about every other router on the market, you can configure the Jetpack through your Web browser by navigating to 192.168.1.1. The interface lets you do the usual stuff like changing the password, modifying security settings (WPA2 is supported), and tweaking the WAN defaults (Global, CDMA/LTE, and GSM only).

After bringing it home, I plugged it in (the AC adapter connects via a Micro-USB B port), fired it up, and logged in to change the network name, password, and security settings. The Jetpack rebooted quickly, and I was off and surfing.

As any good geek would do, I immediately went to speedtest.net and tested my connection. The Jetpack display showed four of five bars, and speedtest.net reported my download speed as 7.71Mbps (I got 6.03Mbps up). That over double what I was able to get on WiMAX at my house (typically about 3.5Mbps). Latency at home ranged from 60-80ms—slower than cable, but definitely acceptable for my usage. At my local Starbucks, a half-mile away, speeds were frequently above 10Mbps with latencies as low as 39ms.

The real test came when we hit the road. With my wife at the wheel, I settled into the passenger seat (a rare treat on road trips) with my 11” MacBook Air and LTE-equipped iPad. While in suburban Chicago, speeds were downright snappy, up to 9Mbps. When we drove from areas of LTE coverage into areas with just 3G coverage, the handoff was transparent. In contrast, my old WiMAX WAP struggled with the WiMAX-to-3G handoff, often dropping the signal. Coverage in Breckenridge was fantastic, as I was able to get speeds between 6-8Mbps consistently.

To get a sense of how AT&T and Verizon’s LTE networks compared in terms of speed, I ran the Speedtest app on my iPad. Verizon was consistently around 20 percent faster, with the screenshot below representative of the typical difference for me both in suburban Chicago and suburban Denver.

Verizon's LTE network (at top) was typically faster than AT&T's on my iPad. But falling back to AT&T's HSPA+ network was more pleasant than using Verizon's 3G.

Verizon’s LTE coverage does appear to be significantly broader than AT&T’s. But when I went out of LTE range, AT&T’s HSPA+ network provided me with a faster surfing experience (as high as 5Mbps) than Verizon’s 3G network.

After about two-and-a-half hours of interstate driving, my son informed us of his urgent need to find a rest stop. His bladder was full—and the Jetpack’s battery was still over half full. I consistently get over five hours of battery life from the Jetpack, and on the return trip from Denver, we managed over six hours (almost all in 3G coverage areas). When using it during a downpour, I did not observe any significant speed drop.

Caveats

The downsides to the Jetpack are few, but one may be a deal-breaker. First, after about three or so hours of consecutive use, pages began stalling as they loaded. Manually reloading fixed the problem, but it was a pain. Slow page loads are something I’ve experienced on three different occasions in two different locations. Second, if you use Dropbox or some other file-syncing solution, be aware of your syncing settings. The first time I fired up the Jetpack, my MacBook Air performed a Dropbox sync that managed to use up 75 percent of my monthly bandwidth allocation.

And that leads me to the biggest drawback to the Jetpack: Verizon’s bandwidth caps. Verizon charges $20 per month for monthly line access; data is extra. I went with 4GB of shared data (although this is my only Verizon device) for $30 per month. 6GB is $40 per month, while 8GB costs $50. You can add data in 2GB increments up to 20GB for $110, and if you go over your allotment, you’ll pay $10 per GB.

If you’re not going to be doing much more than surfing and e-mailing, you should be fine. But if you want to stream some video while on the road or need to move massive files around, your bandwidth well will quickly run dry. It’s a shame—this is the first wireless broadband device I’ve seen that could legitimately replace a wired home broadband connection, but doing so would be prohibitively expensive.

Whether the Jetpack is right for you depends on your needs. If you are looking for broadband redundancy at home, it’s a good—but pricey—backup. If you travel frequently and need broadband connectivity no matter where you are, it will do what you need. And with Verizon’s excellent network coverage, LTE speeds are widely available. Verizon boasts that its LTE network covers over 75 percent of the US population in 371 markets across the country, and I've yet to run into LTE network congestion problems. If, however, you’re irritated with your home cable broadband or DSL provider, the Jetpack isn’t a viable replacement. Sadly, that won’t change unless Verizon significantly relaxes or drops its bandwidth caps. Don’t count on that happening anytime soon.

The good

Fast speeds of up to 13Mbps

Latencies as low as 39ms

Excellent network coverage

Seamless handoff between 3G and LTE cells

Ease of configuration

Battery life better than advertised

The bad

Occasional hiccups loading webpages after a few hours of consecutive usage

Crazy that it's so expensive to get onto the network...I may be missing something, but overseas prepaid sim card access to wireless data seem super cheap in comparison. They'll be in really big trouble if someday its possible to roam data in the us on a network that's based/run overseas! Using gravitons, or perhaps very large Pringles can arrays (VLPCA).

This article is strangely written and and badly edited ("That over double what I was able to get"). It's less of an actual product review and more of a lightweight puff piece... what's the point of it? It says it's a review of of the Jetpack 890 but it ends up being more of an impression of Verizon's LTE service in a couple very specific areas of the country. I don't get it. Nothing about this tells me whether to buy it or not other than, well, if you like Verizon's LTE guess what? and, the battery life was pretty good on the one totally non-scientific test I took with it in the car.

Also, data caps suck, but you know, newsflash. Also not specific to this device being "reviewed".

Verizon's LTE is terribly slow, though - at least in comparison to ours (western/central Canada). In Calgary, or Vancouver where I've used my LTE Note, the *slowest* results I've had from the Speedtest app are 25mbps. It peaks around 40, and I've seen screens of people getting 44. LTE is freaking awesome. You very quickly get used to the speed, then whenever you're in some craphole town without LTE, being stuck on HSPA or (god forbid) 3G is painful. It's particularly nice to have either no difference between your mobile connection and home broadband. If they could just fix up those bandwidth caps, I'd ditch my home connection entirely and just tether my phone when at home.

I'm contemplating picking one of these up for when we travel. With a 6gb data plan, you can happily run a few devices without worrying about data caps so long as you're not doing crazy file transfers or streaming HD all over the place.

Yeah, what good is the ability to go 300 mph when you have to do it in a quarter mile?

Great, you set a world speed record. How useful is that once you've hit the financial barrier? All these carriers bragging about how fast they are, how you can download a 3 gig movie in minutes. Big whoop! What do you do for the rest of the month?

"Fast speeds of up to 13Mbps" - thats not good and that is not fast. What are you paying for? Are you only paying for 13Mbps? Did the salesperson tell you that 13 is fast speed? If you got 80Mbps is that extremley super duper fast?

Perhaps I missed this in the article, but it would be useful to know who manufactures the 890L.

Most other articles on the Internet don't appear to mention it either, instead just relying on Verizon's "Jetpack" moniker, but opening up the case is somewhere Ars Technica can add some value.

BTW it appears to be from ZTE - would be interested in how it compares to my Jetpack 4510L by Novatel.

Cracked the case on the 890L I have on my bench and you're correct, it's a ZTE.

The big takeaway is battery life, that's it. The other mifi/jetpack devices have been fine, except for utter crap battery life. When the point of cellular is portability, getting 2 hours usage between recharges was ridiculous. This unit takes steps in the right direction, but there's room in that case for more battery. Fill 'er up.

i don't see the point in Verizon offering these devices or in any media group covering their release. These devices are only fast at using up tiered data and reaching overage rates faster than ever before. That said, i would want one of these if there were no contracts and no tiers.

Articles like this always make me glad I still have an unlimited LTE plan on Verizon. Never gonna give that up. After 6 months the latest and greatest phones drop to 200 on ebay.

Unlimited phone data is indeed a requirement in my book, and in reality phones can do about 2/3 of what this little box appears to be capable of. So while it is a cool device, to me (and others with smartphones + tethering), it doesn't have a purpose.

When data plans are priced reasonably enough (imo ~$.25/gb max + nominal access fee), I can see devices like these being perfectly viable as wire line replacements. And I hope that does come into the picture eventually.

When data plans are priced reasonably enough (imo ~$.25/gb max + nominal access fee), I can see devices like these being perfectly viable as wire line replacements. And I hope that does come into the picture eventually.

25 cents for a gigabyte? That's almost never going to happen, unless something radical happens. Right now, the price for a gigabyte is $10, and frankly, I don't see the carriers giving up that cash cow for much much less.

thats not good and that is not fast. What are you paying for? Are you only paying for 13Mbps?

Most of the US gets mobile broadband speeds of 1-2Mbps with latency around 100ms. You are not paying for a specific speed.

Except that I almost always get >10Mbps on T-Mobile on my phone (galaxy s3) for HSPA+, and I quite frequently get 15-21 or so Mbps. Granted, upload is atrocious (1-2Mbps) but LTE is supposed to be pushing to the 30-50Mbps range, not 5-13!.

This actually sounds like an issue with the device because the testing I've seen of Verizon's LTE network does show speeds in the 30-50Mbps range. Given this, it's pretty poor to state that it's "fast" - if anything this device seems to have speed problems.

You have got to love Verizon (and now ATnT too) for the idea 'monthly line access'. It is like being granted the right of entry into their club. Imagine the public bus service having an 'access fee' for the right to board or the right to wait at the bus stop.

One, this is just plain stupid because there is no point in boarding the bus without the intention or actually use it. These two are artifically separated. In reality boarding the bus inevitably follows using it for transporation.

Two, and therefore, employing such a scheme at distributing charges basically indicates a deceiving practice - to artifically lead people into believing that the service is cheaper than it actually is. And the fact that people buy it proves that this deception does work.

For me, this practice, of access fee + actual fee is what is a deal breaker - regardless of their actual prices.

I have LTE on my rooted SGSIII and have free WIFI tethering. Why in God's name would I buy this product?

I'm guessing you're the sort to have kept your unlimited data but if you are on a share-everything limited data plan, the FCC (I think it was the FCC) has ruled that Verizon can't discriminate based on what is using the data.

In Japan for around $45 a month you get an Emobile LTE pocket wifi running at 75Mbps down 25Mbps up and a battery that lasts 9 hours in a little Huawei unit that worked perfectly. To be clear, this wireless service was better than my Comcast cable. Considerably faster and uncapped. I had great connectivity boatign down the Sumida River. Sad how far behind we are in the US. Japan is not unique in having not only better but also cheaper wireless data than the US.

I'm surprised no one's really bit on the problem with web pages stalling after long usage sessions. I'm pretty sure that's come up in other user/site reviews of this or similar Jetpack devices.

There's a part of me that would seriously consider one of these as my primary data connection, rather than buying a new smartphone when my current contract is up. I don't make calls, ever (and could use Skype in a pinch, I suppose) and SMS is through Google Voice and thus data. A two device solution isn't ideal, but considering my current provider (C Spire) gets me a whopping 0.3 Mbps down on 3G, even 3-8 Mbps sounds like some sort of unobtainable fantasy. (Home is DSL only, and even on 5 GHz N tops out at about 10 Mbps.)

But then Verizon has to go and make it super expensive and give it low data caps. Bummer. $30 a month for just 4 GB, plus a $20 a month line fee is outrageous. My part of a family plan is less than that for truly unlimited everything. Which probably explains the slow network!

We don't pay for either. Most carriers charge ~$15 a month for 5GB of tethered bandwidth. No promise on speed/latency.

Quote:

Japan is not unique in having not only better but also cheaper wireless data than the US.

You also have to understand the united states is fucking gigantic compared to Japan. It's not feasible for us to have the same level of coverage/bandwidth they have due to the physical distances involved here.